Danie

Join The Newest Social Network And Party Like Its 1987 "Algorithms? Datamining? Brainrot? You don’t need those things to have a social network. As we knew back in the BBS days, long before anyone coined the phrase “social network”, all you need is a place for people to make text posts. [euklides] is providing just such a place, at cyberspace.online. It’s a great mix of old and new — the IRC inspired chatrooms, e-mail inspired DMs (“cybermail”) make it feel like the good old days, while a sprinkling of more modern concepts such as friends lists, a real-time feed, and even the late-lamented “poke” feature (from before Facebook took over the world) provide some welcome conveniences." Yep many are getting sick and tired of the big centralised social networks with their algorithms and data mining. There are actually countless alternatives around, and this is merely one of the latest to arrive on the scene. I have lost count of which social networks I'm actually on. I'm probably only active on around 8 or 9 on a daily basis, but we are spoilt for choice, and many are very welcoming and have a different sort of feel and niche they cater for. From https://hackaday.com/2025/11/12/join-the-the-newest-social-network-and-party-like-its-1987 #technology #socialnetworks

Testing Whether Fast Charging Kills Smartphone Batteries, And Other Myths It will be a lot clearer if you watch the video in the linked article, as the article text does not really clearly summarise all the conclusions. See https://hackaday.com/2025/11/10/testing-whether-fast-charging-kills-smartphone-batteries-and-other-myths #technology #batteries

ODF 1.4 Release Marks 20 Years of OpenDocument Format “Microsoft's proprietary formats like .doc and .docx dominate the office productivity landscape. Most people and organisations rely on these formats for daily document work. This creates a predatory situation where vendor lock-in is the norm and compatibility issues are taken as an omen that moving away from Microsoft Office is a bad idea. OpenDocument Format (ODF) offers an open alternative. It is an ISO-standard XML-based format for text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and graphics. ODF works across multiple office suites, including LibreOffice, Collabora Online, and Microsoft Office itself.” Open standards are critical to the future use and access to data. Open data also helps prevent vendors locking you into their service. Open standards also help lower the costs of services as it increases competition in the market. In summary, open standards protect users. Unfortunately, many organisations work actively against open standards as they stand in the way of their profits, and of course big organisations can lobby governments... As users, we all need to support open standards. We cannot take on the big organisations, but we can decide to prefer to use services based on open standards. And yes, believe it or not, besides the marketing PR, you do NOT NEED to use MS Office. There are perfectly good alternatives, with many being free of cost. If you do still use MS Office, at least choose to save everything in ODF format. See https://itsfoss.com/news/odf-1-4-release #technology #openstandards #ODF

Banning Phones in Schools Is Drastically Changing the Behaviour of Kids, Teachers Say “Gothamist spoke to students about their experience with the ban, and the number one takeaway didn’t have to do with anything to do with hot-button topics like social media addiction or cyberbullying. Instead, it was that kiboshing phones is forcing kids to actually talk to each other in meatspace again — and it’s making schools way noisier, for better or worse.” I'm going to say something that will be highly unpopular with employees, but I think banning phones in the workplace during working hours (not lunchtime) would also boost productivity and focus a lot! I can't but help noticing when I go to do my weekly groceries shopping at a certain supermarket, that in more than one aisle, a packer is busy on their phones with the boxes lying next to them. I doubt these are emergencies, and are more likely ongoing replies to someone on an instant messaging app. Apart from shelf packers though, even for management, they should not be conducting work communication over private messaging apps. E-mail can be read whenever one is at their desk, and the company has a record of the official correspondence then too. There seems to be this need to be in constant contact 24/7, but I have started to realise that I do not need to read every single notification coming in as it happens. I choose times when I'm taking a break, or before supper, etc when it does not break my concentration of what I'm doing. As I'm writing this post, I've heard my phone going ding about 5 times (one at least was from my spouse). If it's urgent though, they can phone me, but if I don't have boundaries in place, a phone threatens to just keep interrupting you. It's the same reason why my phone goes onto Do Not Disturb mode from 22:30 every night. See https://futurism.com/future-society/banning-phones-schools-behavior #technology #health #education #boundaries

This OpenWrt-Based Router Has Swappable Wi-Fi Modules for Future Upgrades “Their Turris router project started as an internal research effort focused on understanding network threats that has now evolved into offering commercial products with rock-solid security and convenient features. Now, they have launched the Turris Omnia NG, the next generation of their security-focused router line. Like its predecessors, the router is manufactured in the Czech Republic.” Yes, part of the news is the swappable Wi-Fi hardware modules, but also very interesting is that the router comes with an open source operating system based on OpenWrt. I really like that! That means that you can do a lot more with it than just being a basic, cripple proprietary router. It can work as a NAS, VPN gateway, run LXC containers or even full Linux distributions like Ubuntu or Debian on virtual machines, or a self-hosted cloud server running Nextcloud. Try doing that on a commercial Asus or T-Link router! See https://itsfoss.com/news/turris-omnia-ng #technology #opensource #routers #openwrt

Scientists Say They’ve Figured Out How to Transcribe Your Thoughts From an MRI Scan “They’re calling the technique “mind captioning,” and it may represent an effective way for transcribing what someone’s thinking, with impressively comprehensive and accurate results.” It is certainly not reading of specific thoughts, but nonetheless statistically the results are way above just random guesses, with some sounding impressive. And yes, it seems AI does the number crunching to arrive at suggestions. As with any technology, there can be good and bad applications for it. The usual culprits will try to exploit the bad side, but think of the good for those with seriously impaired communication capabilities (stroke, aphasia, and other medical difficulties). Right now, of course this is not possible yet to use without an MRI machine, but it is quite promising so far, and possibly better ways to scan will be found. See https://futurism.com/health-medicine/scientists-transcribe-thoughts-mri-scan #technology #health

Why self-hosting matters now more than ever in the age of cloud "A little over a week ago, a DNS update conflict brought down AWS, crippling hundreds of apps and services worldwide. Along with many of Amazon’s own platforms, Netflix, Spotify, Google Drive, Zoom, and many others were affected by the failure. At ground level, online shops went silent. One Reddit user lamented that they had missed out on thousands of dollars in profit because their trading platform couldn’t execute a trade, while another unlucky person’s bed stopped functioning." And just this morning there we suffered a Teraco outage for an hour and a half that affected Internet services too. All my self-hosted services in the house continued to work so I could watch movies, read my RSS news feeds, update my notes management, etc. The linked article goes on to show many other advantages too of self-hosting. That said though, you do at least want to have two hard drives so that there is a rsync backing up daily to the second drive. Just because self-hosting may save you money, does not mean you should skimp on the essentials. You have to take accountability for your data if you self-host. See https://www.xda-developers.com/self-hosting-digital-independence/ #technology #selfhosting

AFFiNE is an excellent open-source knowledge management tool “AFFiNE is an open-source productivity app with a workspace that blends structured note-taking with visual thinking. It’s a bit like Notion, Obsidian, Miro, and NotebookLM combined, but in a minimalist package. There are paid tiers that give you access to more of its AI features and cloud storage (it is a local-first app, though). But you don’t need to subscribe for the everyday management features.” There is a good write-up about this product in the linked article below. I've always preferred flat markdown files as I can see them and access them with any Markdown editor, but I did install AFFiNE a while ago on my Linux desktop. I really liked what it can do in terms of creativity and ideas collaboration. I don't think, though, that it will replace my notes app as I like to have my notes on hand where ever I am. With AFFiNE you do need to use its app for the creation and viewing. That said it does install on macOS, iOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and can work through a web browser too. Looking again at that list, and the fact that you can self-host it, I may have to give this another try as it seems with all that, I probably can sync everything across all my devices. For example, in my desktop AFFiNE app there is an option to sync it with the AFFiNE cloud, which includes a link to your own self-hosted instance. It does also support Markdown formatting, as well as export to/import from markdown files. I tested the import of a Markdown document I'd done a while ago in Obsidian Notes, and it imported perfectly, complete with to-do lists, code blocks, tables, etc. The mobile app though does not appear to export/import Markdown documents itself. Plain documents can be created and edited in AFFiNE's Page mode, but you can also switch to the Edgeless Canvas mode where all the whiteboarding, graphics, etc magic happens. Currently, I'm using Joplin for all my markdown notes, and syncing to a self-hosted Joplin server app. Although Joplin is doing everything I want with markdown notes, it does not store the notes in plain markdown files (like Obsidian Notes does). So, in truth, as fat as file formats go AFFiNE won't be much different from Joplin Notes, and if the browser access can actually view and edit notes directly on the self-hosted AFFiNE instance, that would actually be a big plus over Joplin Notes for me. I'm going to rethink my Joplin vs AFFiNE decision, I think. See https://www.xda-developers.com/built-second-brain-with-affine #technology #brainstorming #knowledgemanagement #opensource

AI Is Amplifying the Dunning-Kruger Effect, New Research Finds “People who are the worst at doing something also tend to severely overestimate how good they are at doing it, while those who are actually skilled tend to not realize their true talent. This galling cognitive bias is called the Dunning-Kruger effect, as you’re probably familiar — and would you believe it if we told you that AI appears to make it even worse?” Taking things at face value, is really the crux of this problem. We've read more than one story about lawyers being caught out by incorrect conclusions drawn by AI. I'd expect, too, that if a trainee lawyer does some research, that they'd have to back it up with the actual references used to do their summary. But it seems too often, a confident answer is given by AI, and many just copy and paste that without questioning it. I like AI that actually provides the links to the source articles, because sometimes I've even found no mention of the answer actually given by AI. AI often just pieces excerpts together, where a human may not have even connected those dots (for very good reason). For some questions, AI can be pretty accurate, but for some others it can be way off the mark, and yet very confidently it will give a wild guess. There is zero actual intelligence in AI. It can be a very useful tool, but only as long as you treat it with caution and check against the sources. Like all technology, it can be very good and it can be very bad. There is no “always good and perfect”. As much as Mr Altman will have us believe AI is a sharp instrument, it is not, it is a blunt one if yielded incorrectly. Given all the hype around AI, and the tremendous investments riding on it, it is no wonder that all networks and products are leaning over backwards to stuff AI into all their products and services, even when no-one asked for it to be there. All these consumer AIs, of course, also all call home to the mother ship in real-time, so imagine what all that data harvesting is also worth. See https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-dunning-kruger-effect #technology #AI

Lock Company Sues Man Who Picked Its Lock, Gets Horribly Humiliated This is often the typical; reaction of an organisation when someone shows their product or service has some serious defect or flaw. The problem is, then we all get to hear about it, and are less than impressed with their attitude. Rather than acknowledging something and fixing it, let's attack the messenger. How does this help the many other consumers who use the product or service? I'd never heard of the lock company Proven industries, but now I do know all about them after they sued Trevor McNally. It is worth remembering that no software or hardware is foolproof, just ask Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, and every other big IT company. As the judge said in this preliminary hearing, someone can say something as long as it is not false (my note: or a politician). See https://futurism.com/future-society/lockpick-lawsuit-trevor-mcnally #technology #security #legal

Consumers should be very wary of buying cloud connected appliances or devices Flashing lights and AI-powered functionality often hides a very dark secret. Most of these devices are connected to a cloud service, you typically do not even know where that service is (and the US is as bad as China when it comes to eavesdropping, allegedly). In the linked article, a man discovered what happened when he tried to block that access, which also reveals another issue — that the devices can frequently be remotely disabled, and you would not know anything about that. Such a device connected to your main home network, as it has established a network link out through your firewall, could be used to attack or snoop on all your other network devices including computers. You certainly, as an absolute minimum, want such devices only connected to a guest network, and want that guest network isolated from the main network (the latter is not the default for consumer grade routers). In my case, my IoT devices have their own VLAN which is completely isolated from all other network devices, which are also segmented into their own VLAN groupings. In summary, just remember that a cloud dependent device can become a useless paper weight at a point in time (whether you stop paying for a subscription service, or whether the manufacturer goes out of business or ends support), it can open up external access to your network, or it can be sending out other sensitive information anywhere in the world. Because 99.9% of us have no idea what that device is actually doing, we may want to rethink supporting the purchase of such devices. The more people who buy them, the more manufacturers will produce them, and we'll see fewer alternatives available over time. I'm a cynic though, so I'm doubting the world will stand up together and only purchase non-cloud connected devices, but I thought I'd just put this out there. Credit to Security Now! podcast episode no 1049 where it was discussed. See https://futurism.com/robots-and-machines/robot-vacuum-broadcasting #technology #cloud #security #privacy

Electric vs petrol car running costs in South Africa – The winner is clear An interesting comparison that really gives this a local perspective, even given the high increases in the cost of electricity that South Africa has experienced. One also has to factor in the servicing and maintenance costs over time such as services which require oil (various) changes, spark plugs, air filters, and brake pads. Electric vehicles using regenerative braking of course also have way less brake pad wear. There is also the lowered emissions (both still give off micro-particles from the tyres and brake pads) and reduced noise levels. The ever evolving battery is sometimes cited as a future cost, but to be honest by solar system battery is warrantied for 10 years or 4,000 full cycle charges, and it seems many EV batteries have already lasted that long too, before being repurposed for static storage solutions. That said, even combustion engines require major overhaul after 300,000 or 500,000 km. Advances and research suggest EV batteries may last 40% longer than earlier estimates, and some manufacturers are aiming for batteries capable of lasting approximately 1,600,000 km. So although everything may not yet be perfect for EVs, there is a really strong case for their future, despite what a lot of heavy-duty PR from the oil companies may suggest. Every incumbent industry, throughout history, has always very strongly resisted any change away from their industry. It's just that today, industries are a lot better organised and have the financial power of lobbying at their disposal. See https://topauto.co.za/features/137133/electric-vs-petrol-car-running-costs-the-winner-is-clear #technology #EV #SouthAfrica

TT-RSS Shuts Down, but the Project Lives On Under a New Fork “In a surprising move, Andrew Dolgov (known online as “fox”), the original developer of the popular self-hosted open-source RSS reader and news aggregator Tiny Tiny RSS (TT-RSS), announced that on November 1, 2025, he will dismantle all infrastructure powering tt-rss.org, including its Git repositories, cgit instance, and user forum.” TT-RSS was one of the options I was tossing up between, before I decided on FreshRSS. It has been going for a long time though, so kudos anyway to its dev for supporting it for 20 years already. But it is important for any users to note there is a fork available, and they may want to just check out the details for any migrations required. In most cases, for self-hosted instances, that may just be the change of the image name to source the updates from. See https://linuxiac.com/tt-rss-shuts-down-but-the-project-lives-on-under-a-new-fork #technology #opensource #RSS

Sanity Prevails Finally! Your passwords don’t need so many fiddly characters, NIST says "The US National Institute of Standards and Technology has released its latest guidelines for password creation, and it comes with some serious changes. Gone are the days of resetting your and your employees’ passwords every month or so, and no longer should you or your small business worry about requiring special characters, numbers, and capital letters when creating those passwords. Further, password hints and basic security questions are no longer suitable means of password recovery, and password length, above all other factors, is the most meaningful measure of strength." It looks like finally the last 10 years of security researchers recommendations have been taken on board. Why now suddenly? I have no idea, but I am glad that sanity is finally prevailing. It was a few years back that the originator of that d**n 30 day password change idea admitted there were no grounds actually for it. Password length is really the key criteria. So a well-chosen phrase can now be easier to remember as well as being more difficult to crack. Of the course, the big challenge will be, how many years will it be before organisations actually adopt this change... See https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/10/your-passwords-dont-need-so-many-fiddly-characters-nist-says #technology #passwords #security

No surprise: Research shows you cannot believe everything on social media “An analysis of how tools to make non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes spread online, from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, shows X and search engines surface these sites easily.” Everyone seems to be noticing social media has just becoming worse and worse all around. If it was not trolling, it was scams and worse, it was harassment, incitements to violence, and often there seems to be a decided tendency towards trying to rile users up through the use of various triggers (politics, war, religion, discrimination, etc are all great triggers that rarely fail). I used to blame this on just masses of people getting online, and it taking all sorts, including the bad sorts. But in fact, a lot today seems to be driven by bots and even AI. What the study also seems to show (it does not state directly) is those networks and search engines, which use algorithms to lift out viral posts, are the very worst by a long shot. This makes sense as algorithms will exponentially raise visibility of some posts versus networks that just show who you are following with posts sorted chronologically. The Enshitification of social networks and search engines (including manipulated AI) is truly here. So, it is good to remember that a LOT of what you read may well be fake and just calculated to rule you up, and also that there are quieter networks where this sort of thing does not happen as much. I'm also hearing more of my friends saying they just don't read newspapers or look at social media anymore. Many have decided to just skip it all. So don't be fooled either by all those likes and reshare numbers that you see. Don't feel guilty either to just block people — no don't waste your time trying to report them as I can tell you from experience reporting posts on both Facebook and X, NEVER resulted in any positive action (“the post did not contravene our guidelines”, is the standard reply, if you get one). The most effective way to solve such a problem, if it becomes too much for you, is to just delete your account and move to another network or search engine. There are plenty of options out there. See https://www.404media.co/deepfake-tools-spread-on-social-media-research #technology #socialnetworks #enshitification #deepfakes

20 Essential SSH Configurations and Security Tips for Linux SSH is an essential tool for anyone managing Linux servers, and using it correctly can make your work both easier and more secure. By following the tips in this guide, you can protect your servers from unauthorised access, simplify your logins with key-based authentication and aliases, and monitor activity with tools like fail2ban and session timeouts. Start with the basics, such as changing the default port, disabling root login, and setting up key-based login, and then gradually explore advanced features like two-factor authentication, SSH tunnelling, and verbose logging. The linked article is a really useful overview to skim though and see what you can use, and what can be locked down and even automated. See https://www.tecmint.com/ssh-security-linux-tips #technology #ssh #Linux #opensource

A Fascinating History in Photos of Tram and 'Bus Transport in Cape Town since the 1800s I was looking for the location of the old Tollgate depot in Cape Town when I came upon this really excellent Museum page on the GAB site showing a really well laid out chronological history of the various forms of tram and omnibus services over the years from the early 1800s up to around 2009. Apart from just the vehicles, they also cover a lot around the depots, the staff, and the company itself. I do vividly remember the City Tramways company when I used to catch the old double-deck Leyland diesel buses (the ones that chugged like the Routemaster buses), but I always thought that when they rebranded later to Golden Arrow Bus Services (GABS) that it was the usual modern naming trend. What I now see from this page was that in fact the Golden Arrow (the name) had a proud legacy itself that actually predated the City Tramways name back to 1929. Hovering over a photo also shows a lot more context and information about it. See https://www.gabs.co.za/Museum.aspx #CapeTown #History #Trams #Buses

CoolerControl is a Powerful cooling control and monitoring tool for Linux This open-source application not only has a very modern looking and configurable interface, it also has some powerful ways to control the cooling too. It can combine different device sensors (mixed profiles) to set cooling using multiple fans. Profiles for each device can be BIOS, fixed, graph curve, mix, or overlays. Thresholds can also be adjusted to eliminate false positive alerts or to smooth the response of the fans. The application can also run in headless mode on remote Linux systems, and there is a REST API that can be used to integrate remote monitoring systems. My video gives an overview of how I am using it, and what I am finding very useful. It should help you decide whether the application will be of use to you or not. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvWiGmrpiP8 #technology #opensource #Linux #CoolerControl

The EFF's How to: Get to Know iPhone Privacy and Security Settings “Open up your iPhone’s Settings app and you’ll find dozens of different options with little guidance on what those options do. Some of these settings have a serious impact on your privacy and security, altering what data gets shared automatically with apps, data brokers, and Apple itself. What sorts of changes you should make depends on how you use your phone and your security plan. There is no one-size-fits-all collection of recommended settings to change, instead, we’ll explain what settings do to help you decide if they’re worth altering.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation has the user's back, unlike the case is often with Big Tech or government's themselves. This How To may be well worth reading if you use an iPhone. See https://ssd.eff.org/module/how-to-get-to-know-iphone-privacy-and-security-settings #technology #privacy #iOS

You Must Be Joking: Facebook’s new button lets its AI look at photos you haven’t uploaded yet “Meta has rolled out an opt-in AI feature to its US and Canadian Facebook users that claims to make their photos and videos more shareworthy. The only catch is that the feature is designed for your phone’s camera roll — not the media you’ve already uploaded to Facebook. If you opt in, Meta’s AI will comb through your camera roll, upload your unpublished photos to Meta’s cloud, and surface “hidden gems” that are “lost among screenshots, receipts, and random snaps,” the company says.” By accessing or using this feature, users will have opted in to this. The real problem is Facebook's horrific record of privacy abuses from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to WhatsApp T&Cs sharing metadata with partners, to being under US CLOUD Act jurisdiction, to the video I have of Mark Zuckerberg assuring everyone they will always own their own data. This is just not a company anyone can believe, and the line mentioning “might hold onto some of that data for longer than 30 days” will mean all of your data will be in there forever. I deleted the Facebook app off my phone many years ago, and I block any of their login code found littered across all of the web too. Facebook's business model is all centred around profiling users to an extreme level of accuracy, and selling that data to “partners”. They are NOT in the social network business, but rather the data harvesting/sales business. Unfortunately, yet again, most Facebook users will just fall for the glitzy pictures and the pretty user interface, and go all in. Mark will testify again in Congress at some point with his carefully crafted responses, and the cycle keeps repeating. The only power that will make any difference is when the sheep all stand together and just delete themselves from his data harvesting machine. That, though, will likely never happen unless there is some cleaner better social network (not a microblogging service) that can support a few billion users and which is not funded from a profit driven US-corporation... The next best thing is we just give up on a general social network, and all revert to microblogging platforms (like the few have done already). See https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/802102/meta-facebook-opt-in-ai-edits-photos-camera-roll #technology #privacy #facebook